The House that Kevin Built 2012 The Brighton Waste House

Summer Update

7 August 2013

Mears apprentices working on the roof

Due to the huge amount of work carried out by our amazing Summer School Volunteer Camp the Waste House team are taking a well earned break until 12 August.

The Summer Camp has had over 50 volunteers working on site since the end of June, comprising 21 students from City College Brighton and Hove, 26 from the Faculty of Art and three members of the public. So a huge 'thank you' is due to all who have helped and are keeping the works going while the academic institutions are closed for the summer. I would also like to thank David Pendegrass & Mr.Dee, both from Mears, for coordinating this, and congratulate the five City College Carpentry students who have started their Mears Apprenticeship Programme while working on the Waste House.

City College Brighton and Hove Students 

On 17 July we welcomed 70 pupils from St. Andrews C&E School to site. They arrived armed with toothbrushes to contribute to the insulation for one of the wall 'cassettes'. They were joined by Dr. Caroline Lucas MP and a film crew from ITV. You can see their report, and others, in our Press Coverage page here.

On 26 July we received damaged and returned external wall and roof insulation from Kingspan. This material is 'proper' insulation used in constructing well insulated twenty-first century buildings. Kingspan collect the damaged and surplus material from building sites and resell it to farmers for insulating cowsheds or it is sold for packaging. We will use it to provide external wall and roof insulation in addition to the tooth brushes, video tapes etc already installed. It will give us the correct levels of insulation to pass Building Regulations Approval. The non-conventional insulation materials provide additional insulation beyond this benchmark.

Finally, our Chief Scavenger Cat Fletcher of Freegle has won another award. She recently returned from San Francisco, where together with James Togut, won a Global Award for social innovation in the Living Labs / Cities Pilot the Future competition. The LLGA is an opportunity for people from around the world to create solutions for real life problems presented by over 20 cities. The cities then facilitate the winning urban and social innovators to pilot their solutions. James and Cat’s winning solution ‘CityMakers' is an online platform and street level programme that accelerates resourcefulness by connecting and measuring untapped skills, goods, events, people and initiatives in any community. You can watch a video about it here. So well done Cat.

Film produced by Kurt Rademeyer
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